A How-To Guide on Lead Nurturing:Managing Your Sales Leads

Your Prospects Are Very Busy

B2B selling, as we know, can be a lengthy process, and it’s not without difficulties. Variousorganisational changes can affect the buying process at any stage:

• The decision maker you were in talks with may have left or moved to a different role

• The company does not have the available budget

• They have already purchased a different service on an annual subscription base

What lengthens the process even more, is that according to a Marketing Sherpa study, 73% ofB2B leads aren’t ready to buy when you first connect with them

This means that companies must find a way to nurture these sales leads until the buyer is readyto purchase. So when they are ready to buy, you are the top of mind brand and the firstcompany they will want to call

A How-To Guide on Lead Nurturing

To get a better understanding of how best to nurture your sales leads throughout the buying process, we’ve developed a step-by-step guide

Understand the Definition of Lead Nurturing

This might sound redundant, but it’s important to understand exactly what leadnurturing is in order to guide your sales leads through the buying process.

“Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel, and through every stepof the buyer's journey. It focuses marketing and sales on listeningto the needs of prospects, and providing the information and answers they need.”

Know the Benefits of Lead Nurturing

Why is lead nurturing so important? Don’t just take it from us, take it from everyoneelse too:

• Companies that automate lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months(Gartner)

• Lead nurturing emails with good content generate an 8% CTR compared to general emails which generatejust 3% (HubSpot)

• Lead nurturing emails get 4-10 more response rate compared to single email blasts (Demand Gen)

• Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities as opposed to non-nurturedleads (Demand Gen)

• Companies that excel during the lead nurturing process can generate 50% more sales leads and at 33%lower cost (Forrester)

• Nurtured leads through email efforts make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. And at 33%lower cost (Annuitas)

• Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualifiedleads (Annuitas)

Map Out A Lead Nurturing Process

This might be slightly different for everyone, but it’s important to map out a lead nurturing process to help identify each stage of the buying process. Here’s an example of ours, feel free to implement it! Let’s look at these stages more closely:

1. Sales Lead Qualification Criteria

Normally, the ‘perfect customer’ possesses a number of key characteristics orattributes that will influence their likelihood to buy your product or service (we talkmore about this in our blog on lead definition). Below are some examples of theseattributes. These need to be agreed by Sales and Marketing in order to determinewhich leads are best the fit for the product or service you’re selling:

2. Sales Lead Generation

Firstly, you should identify where your current sales leads are coming from.Usually, multiple sources (as outlined in the diagram). Using the leadqualification criteria that we just discussed, you will need to analyse which ofyour existing sales lead sources will best fit the email campaign you’redeveloping.

If you don’t have enough of the right sales leads in your CRM system ordatabase today, you will need to set aside some budget to buy sales leads. Hereare some great companies to consider:

• SalesOptimize - salesoptimize.com

• Unomy - unomy.com

• Hoovers - hoovers.com

• Insideview - insideview.com

• DiscoverOrg - discoverorg.com

• Found - found.ly

• Rainking - rainkingonline.com

• Datafox - datafox.com

• Elucify - getelucify.com

• Leadfeeder - leadfeeder.com

3. Your Customers’ Needs & Interests

Now that you have your sales leads, you need to know your customer and develop the perfect profile. To reallyunderstand their needs and interests, run a workshop between your Sales and Marketing teams. Here, youwill most likely see different types of customers who have different needs and interests. Below is an example ofone customer profile:

At SalesOptimize, we provide sales leads to companies

selling to online retailers. Here are some examples of

the industries we actively sell to:

• Shipping

• Fulfilment & Logistics

• Payment

• Banking Services

• Technology service providers

• Telecommunication companies

• Marketing & SEO agencies

• Fraud prevention software

• Online insurance providers

*** This means that we have in excess of 20 customer profiles for different industries. As a result, we need to execute varying content strategies and sales pitches to ensure that the message is relevant for each customer profile

4. Create Engaging Content

Now that you’ve identified your customer profile, you can start sharing rich content with them. This willencourage interest and prompt them to view your website and get in touch.

Keep them interested with original content that provides ideas and solutions to some of the pain points theyare experiencing. There are a number of different ways you can engage with prospects through compellingcontent:

• Introduction email

• Follow up email after a customer has been on trial

• Case Studies

• How to guides

• Best practices

• Invitation to webinars

• Industry whitepapers

• Newsletters

• Market reports

4. Create Engaging Content

Three of the most common ways that companies segment their content includes: segmentation by market,buyer persona, and buying stage. 50% of companies create content for three or more market segments,and 47% support more than three buyer personas. 46% of companies create content supporting three or morebuying stages in their market activities.

5. What Kind of Content is Interesting?

Case studies are one of the most effective content subjects, as well as best practicesand how-to-guides

However, product features and competitive articles do not rank as highly on the list forcompelling subjects to write about

People like to read content that will benefit them in

some way, and self-promotion isn’t favourable

6. Develop a Content Schedule

Keep a plan of the content you’re posting. This will help hugely from both an organisation and SEO point ofview. Here's an example of our content publication schedule:

7. Email Marketing Can Communicate the Message

Now that you have the leads, know who your ideal customer is, and you have engaging content,let’s start sending it out! I strongly recommend using an email marketing tool. Here are somegreat ones to consider:

8. Track and Analyse

After 48 hours, you can commence tracking and analysing the performance of the campaign. Typically, an openrate of 25% or above is considered good. 40% or more is considered excellent. Some of the key KPIs to track foremail marketing campaigns are:

• Delivered email

• Open volume

• Open rate

• Click volume

• Click through rate

• Opt out rate

• Demos scheduled

• Demos done

• Trial sign up rates

• No of customers acquired

9. Respond to Interest

One of the process steps we implemented in SalesOptimize was to ring the customer immediatelyafter they opened an email. If the customer was interested, we invited them to a product demoor a follow up meeting. We found this method to be very powerful, and it helped us acquire somelarge enterprise accounts within a few months of launching the business. We talk more about thisin our post on using email marketing and telesales in tandem.

10. When Customers Fail to Open Emails

Awake the non responsive! Reasons why emails are not read can vary:

• They may have ended up in the spam folder

• The target recipient has left the company

• The email title or content was poor, etc. Here,

the marketing team should execute a follow up email

Where the customer has failed to open both the

original and follow up email, it may be a good

idea for an outbound sales executive to start

working their magic!

Summary

Lead Nurturing is hard work, and requires a commitment of resources and budget. It’s anincredible journey, and a critical process that drives double digit growth in your bottom line.

After each campaign, sit down with the Sales and Marketing teams and discuss what worked andwhat didn’t; don’t be afraid to have frank discussions. These will give you incredible moment oftruths that may lead to improvements in your product, your lead qualification criteria, yourcustomer profile definition, your email content, sales follow up process, and ultimately yourbottom line.

Thank you for your timeLiz Fulham, CEO

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